Shifting Forces: The Evolving Debate Around Dark Energy
1 min read
Summary
DESI, an instrument at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, has found results suggesting dark energy might not behave as cosmologists have assumed.
Live Science said the finding was so significant it proclaimed “We might have gotten dark energy totally wrong,” in a headline.
If the finding holds, it would mean prior scientific models haven’t accurately depicted the behavior or evolution of dark energy and could require scientists to completely change their conception of the universe.
The finding could also upend research trajectories.
Since dark energy is assumed to be a constant, the universe should expand at an increasing rate, causing distant galaxies to speed away from us forever.
If dark energy is evolving, however, the universe’s fate could be different, and current models of the universe’s end could be wrong.
The lesson? In science, experts say, getting it right may involve hurling some assumptions about how the universe works — even if those assumptions were strongly supported by evidence.
